A Legal Threat Could Delay the BC Green Leadership Vote

BC Green Party leadership candidate Emily Lowan has threatened to sue the party unless changes are made to the process for verifying members allowed to participate in a vote set to start Saturday.

Lowan, a 24-year-old climate advocate from Victoria, is running against Comox doctor and city Coun. Jonathan Kerr and Adam Bremner-Akins, a Port Coquitlam student who has served on the party’s executive.

In an Aug. 28 letter to three BC Green Party officials, Victoria lawyer Ben Isitt wrote that Lowan had retained him as legal counsel, raised a number of concerns and suggested it may be necessary to delay the leadership vote.

“We understand that the Party is proposing a verification process for new members who have joined the Party since Oct. 19, 2024... while exempting 5,492 members who belonged to the Party prior to that date,” he wrote.

The party has said publicly there are about 4,500 new members, with about one-third of them youth between 14 and 29 who joined for free.

“The Verification Process as proposed is cumbersome, unnecessary, discriminatory and prejudicial to Ms. Lowan and her campaign and supporters (and therefore unfair),” wrote Isitt. “Be advised that Ms. Lowan wishes to resolve this matter without recourse to the Courts.”

Like Anjali Appadurai’s campaign in the BC NDP leadership race in 2022, which that party rejected by disqualifying her, Lowan’s strategy has focused on signing up new members.

Isitt’s letter on behalf of Lowan was addressed to BC Green Party chief electoral officer Ryley Johnston, executive director Molly McKay and provincial council chair Alex Pope.

The party has cited briefings from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Elections BC on the threat of foreign interference in leadership races to explain why it’s necessary to verify the new members.

Verification options include using an online system, video conferencing with party staff or being vouched for by an existing party member or family member.

Isitt’s letter to the BC Greens included a series of demands, starting with challenging the party to demonstrate the need for the verification process.

“The Party must provide any evidence in its possession of foreign interference or other irregularities in the membership application process... including IP Address Records identifying the country of origin where members were located at the time they joined the Party,” it said.

It then called for limiting which new members would have to undergo the process. “If the Party is determined to continue with the Verification Process,” the letter said, “its application must be limited to only those new members who joined the Party from internet protocol addresses... located outside Canada.”

If the party was unwilling to narrow the process, then the verification requirement should extend to every member, Isitt wrote, including members who belonged to the party before Oct. 19, 2024.

The vote should proceed only if at least 80 per cent of the new members have been verified by Saturday, when voting is scheduled to start, and should be delayed if that threshold has not been met, it said.

The verification process is unsupported by evidence of foreign interference or other irregularities in the sign-up process, it said, and “discriminates against young persons and other nontraditional voters and Party supporters.”

This is particularly prejudicial to Lowan and her campaign, the letter added, “as it disproportionately impacts her and her supporters, while insulating other party members and supporters of other candidates from scrutiny and barriers to participating in the Leadership Vote.”

It gave the recipients until Sept. 2 to respond.

Isitt said Wednesday that the party has responded and discussions are ongoing, but so far the party has defended the verification process as adequate.

“The campaign continues to have very substantial concerns,” he said, adding they are proposing the party accept the membership of anyone who paid using a credit card, which would significantly reduce the number of people who would need to be verified.

“The main concern is that potentially half the members will be disenfranchised and won’t be able to vote because we don’t think the party has capacity to verify several thousand new members between now and the voting period,” said Isitt.

Stefan Jonsson, the BC Green Party’s executive adviser, said he wouldn’t comment directly on the letter and the threat of legal action, but that the party has been receiving feedback for several weeks from the Lowan campaign and has been acting to address the concerns, including by expanding the ways members can get verified.

“We want a positive resolution to this,” said Jonsson. “I can certainly say the party’s commitment is for every single person who wants to vote in the leadership contest to be verified, and we are resourced and ready to make that happen and are doing that every hour of the waking day.”

There is more capacity to verify people than is currently being used, and the party has committed to scaling it up further if necessary, he said.

“The party is doing everything it can to ensure this is a smooth process,” he said. “The vast majority of people have had no problems at all and for those that are having an issue there are many different resources that they can access.”

Isitt, who served 11 years as a city councillor in Victoria, was a longtime NDP member who sought a federal nomination from the party and once worked as its youth policy director.

He declined to confirm his current political affiliation and said that as a lawyer he has a duty to put his client’s interests first.

A Business in Vancouver article quoted both the other leadership candidates, Kerr and Bremner-Akins, saying they have no concerns about the verification process and support efforts the party is making to combat voter fraud.

Stewart Prest, a lecturer in political science at the University of British Columbia, said the party needs to be careful in handling the issue since it is clear from the candidates’ comments that its decision could affect who wins the leadership.

“All of that will now play out in the public sphere during the campaign, and if it isn’t resolved before the votes are counted it could potentially cast a cloud over the winner, whoever that proves to be,” Prest said.

It is always risky for political actors to take legal action, he added. “Even the threat of legal action can burn bridges, can make it difficult to maintain the trust of at least some members of the party that you hope to be in charge of, and perhaps are, once votes are counted, however this issue is resolved.”

The public has an expectation that contests to lead political parties are free and fair, and it may be time to reopen a broader discussion about whether they should have independent oversight from an organization like Elections BC, said Prest.

Isitt said the letter threatening to sue came out of a sense of frustration after earlier efforts to get the party to address the verification issues failed. “It’s our strong hope this can be resolved without litigation.”

Lowan said she retained legal counsel “because I was hearing from dozens of new members who were struggling with this process and for weeks, just about a month, I’d been in conversation with the party to offer constructive solutions to improve the process.”

While the party had made some changes, she said, the process continues to have serious communication and accessibility issues.

“This is an effort to demonstrate how seriously we are taking the concerns of members who are feeling disenfranchised by the verification process,” said Lowan. “I know many who are reporting this feeling of distrust with the party.”

Green leadership voting is scheduled to open Saturday, and the party plans to announce the winner on Sept. 24.